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Does a “body-only” DSLR need a lens added before use?If you are standing in an unlit room with a small window and hold a magnifying glass in front of your camera with no lens, you can take a photo of the outside. It is usually worse than a pinhole lens, but can be fun for a couple hours.

Aug12

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Difference between short/long exposure for faraway objects?When in doubt the middle is best: (From Feynman) "When you have a gear ratio, say 2 to 1, and you are wondering whether you should make it 10 to 5 or 24 to 12 or 48 to 24, here's how to decide: You look in the Boston Gear Catalogue, and select those gears that are in the middle of the list.The ones at the high end have so many teeth they're hard to make, if they could make gears with even finer teeth, they'd have made the list go even higher. The gears at the low end of the list have so few teeth they break easy. So the best design uses gears from the middle of the list."

If I have a 18-55mm lens, is there a point in buying a 35mm prime lens?I had a 18-55mm kit lens, then got a 50mm f1.4. I did not take the 1.4 off my camera for the next 15'000 shots. The level of control in image quality is well worth it, combined with the peace of mind knowing that you only have to consider one focal length when trying to make the shot. If it does not fit, then it does not fit, you walk on happy.

How can I change colour of reflection/shadows to blue, to match the water?Go to the layers and click the channels, find the one with the most contrast, Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C to grab it. Go back to the layers and add a new layer, then Ctrl+V to paste it. Use levels to get a good contrast, then use threshold to get the area isolated. Duplicate the image, and apply this new layer as a mask. Then use the hue-shift (it is in the image menu? I am not at my computer so I can't check) tool to correct the color how you see fit. If you need more detail, Google some of the terms I have talked about, these are all very common steps to complete.